Pilot production

[JakeH]

Wondering if any of you have done anything at smaller scale in your plants for R&D and pilot production?  I’m thinking of putting together that capability at something like 20-30 gallon scale so we can test out small mash bills without using the bigger equipment. 
 

Are any of you doing this?  Any recommendations of affordable and capable equipment at that smaller scale. Thinking the still part will be easy enough, but mash tun?  Could use the still for mashing perhaps. 
 

Any thoughts?

[DrDistillation]

This type of things works great for certain spirits.  A simple milk can 16 to 26 gallon or 1/2 keg and 2" to 3" column/riser works well for R&D.

The problem I've always seen is for spirits that need aging on wood.  You can't produce enough to put away in a 53 gallon barrel with these stills.  Even if you could one barrel is meaningless as you want a handful to be able to sample after a couple of years to get an idea.  Trying to use 5 or 10 gallon barrels is different than a 53 gallon.

So "flavorful" spirits that need aging can be tricky.  If you are experienced and know how the white dog will age from experience then maybe less a problem.  Even producing just a white dog can be quite useful if playing with different yeast or recipes to try to get more spicy, more fruity flavors, more mouthfeel, etc.

To me where small stills are great is playing with recipes, ferments and yeasts and botanicals.  Hey what happens if we use 20% oats in our mash for our vodka/gin for mouthfeel.  For doing small batches to test botanicals for Gin, Geneva, Aqua Vitae type spirits.  Certainly could be used for Rums as well.

Whiskey not so much due to aging and oaking. unless you "know" your white dog.

[JakeH]

Thanks for the reply.  My plan for any of this was to just mess around with different mash bills, yeast strains and develop some botanical formulas for Gin.  

For anything aged, its less useful to actually try out aging as you say, I know roughly what I want the white dog to be like, but that's a whole different bit of R&D really.  This is just mainly to be something where I just try out a grain bill at 1/10th scale or something and allow me to not waste too much raw materials in the process.  

Could also be used perhaps to finish out small runs of gin, etc.  

Was thinking about just getting a hillbilly still type setup with the milk can and toss the column on there.  can find a good enough way to mash and ferment at that scale easily enough as well, just wondering if there have been any suppliers or solutions others have found that worked alright for this.  

[DrDistillation]

Sounds like anything 8 to 16 gallon boiler size wise would work.

Since you'd be mashing at hobby size levels just use what many of them do any use anything from a Brute 20/32/44 gallon trash cans to a 55 gallon plastic barrels depending on the amount you need. You likely have plenty of things you could use to ferment small amounts in including 5 or 6 gallon buckets with lids.  Buckets or Brute 20s are a cool way to make a mash then split it up 4 or 5 ways to try different yeasts at the same time from the same mash.

[Southernhighlander]

We specialize in R&D/pilot stills.  If your large still is jacketed, then a single walled directly heated still will not mimic the production of your big still nearly as  well as a jacketed pilot still.  We have 10 gallon, 20 gallon and 45 gallon jacketed R&D still pots with modular column components to make them produce like your production still.  Any of these stills can be configured as a combination mash tun still so that you can cook a corn based grain bill, then ferment in the pot and then distill.  We can configure them to match the production of any of our production stills and the production stills of most of our competitors.  We have them in baine marie electric, on board electric over steam and with steam jackets that are boiler fired.  We can configure them with gin baskets, bubble plate columns, vodka columns, packed vodka columns, traditional single and double retort rum stills stainless pot and copper pot and pretty much anything else that you want.  We even have some small traditional copper stills that are wood fired (outside use only) they have steel fireboxes withchimneys, one even has a hand crank agitator.

We keep all of the ready made components in stock.   Like our large stills, our R&D stills will pass all fire/ safety and electrical inspections.  We currently have our production stills in around 20% of the distilleries in the US and most of those distilleries also purchased our mash tuns, fermenters, receiving vessels, proofing tanks, blending tanks, mash pumps, ethanol pumps and some purchased their UL listed ethanol storage tanks, vacuum stills, rotary evaporators, short path stills, low pressure steam and other boilers and many other items from us as well..  From what we can tell we have the deepest 304SS sanitary parts catalog in the USA.  We have sold over 7,000 small stills and our production stills are in over 400 distilleries

Our pilot stills are quality manufactured and affordable.  If you need a pilot still, give me a holler and I'll set you up.  paul@distillery-equipment.com 417-778-6100 or 417-778-6908

[Southernhighlander]

Below are some of our pilot stills:

This is a 20 gallon steam jacketed still with our copper and stainless 4 plate bubble plate column, agitator and VFD for the agitator.  This customer also ordered a filter housing on a cart which sits next to the still.  The still's column contains one of my copper defuser plate assemblies.  My defuser plate assemblies have 3 purposes, one of which is to catalyze sulfers.  Just one of my defuser plate assemblies gives more copper vapor interaction than an all copper pot still, without a catalyzer.

Below is a 20 gallon pilot still configured somewhat like the above still, except that it is a combination mash tun still and it is a baine marie.  The agitator motor is UL listed explosion proof and as you can see all safety devices are in place.  The electric heating system and agitator are compliant with the C1D2 hazardous environment that exists around a still. 

The agitator is a low rpm high torque geared agitator, vertically mounted with large paddles.  Never use a high rpm agititator with a tiny impeller for corn or rye mash.  They suck for that purpose.  

Below is a little 45 gallon baine marie vodka still with gin basket.  The 6" diameter column is a hybred, bubble plate packed column that mimics a 20 bubble plate column. The heating system on this one puts out 16.5 kW.

Below is a lttle 20 gallon R&D still.  It is a combination mash tun still designed to produce just like our Pro Series Ultra Pro Whiskey stills and our Paul Hall Signature Series Ultra Pro Whiskey Stills.  The drop line from the line arm to feed vapor to the 4 plate looks out of plumb but it isn't.  I think that it's a trick of the eye cause by the items in the back ground.

Just so everyone knows, we are an essential business and we do not plan on shutting down because of COVID19.

 

[captnKB]

Ive done some pilot work on "milkcan" stills with heating elements as the source of heat. These stills work great for distilling clean wash with no solids in it, but if any of your distilling is grain on Id reccomend getting a still that has an adjitator and steam heated

[Southernhighlander]

On 4/4/2020 at 9:52 AM, captnKB said:

Ive done some pilot work on "milkcan" stills with heating elements as the source of heat. These stills work great for distilling clean wash with no solids in it, but if any of your distilling is grain on Id reccomend getting a still that has an adjitator and steam heated

captnKB,

  If you need milk can still pots, let me know and I will give you a really good price.  We have them in all sizes and we have sold over 7,000 of them as still pots for complete stills and by themselves.  We have hundreds of them in stock and ready to ship.  We also have heating systems in stock and we can custom build anything that you want within reason. 417-778-6100 or 417-778-6908.

 

Thanks.

 

[JakeH]

Southerhighlander,

      These look awesome, and I would definitely like to go with something steam jacketed I think, My production still is and should be no big issue to tie one of these small ones in.  I am going to have to sort out what size I want to go with, thinking in the 25-50 gal range, the big questions I need to still think about is really what i will use this for.  I think its likely to be small batches of whiskey for R&D to play around with the mash bill, I think I would like to possibly also run small batches of gin to play with different botanicals.  

Will definitely be in touch possibly to brainstorm what could be done.

Thanks for the replies!

[Southernhighlander]

20 minutes ago, JakeH said:

Southerhighlander,

      These look awesome, and I would definitely like to go with something steam jacketed I think, My production still is and should be no big issue to tie one of these small ones in.  I am going to have to sort out what size I want to go with, thinking in the 25-50 gal range, the big questions I need to still think about is really what i will use this for.  I think its likely to be small batches of whiskey for R&D to play around with the mash bill, I think I would like to possibly also run small batches of gin to play with different botanicals.  

Will definitely be in touch possibly to brainstorm what could be done.

Thanks for the replies!

Thanks Jake. We have just what you need in stock. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

[Silk City Distillers]

On 4/3/2020 at 12:13 PM, JakeH said:

Wondering if any of you have done anything at smaller scale in your plants for R&D and pilot production?  I’m thinking of putting together that capability at something like 20-30 gallon scale so we can test out small mash bills without using the bigger equipment. 
 

Are any of you doing this?  Any recommendations of affordable and capable equipment at that smaller scale. Thinking the still part will be easy enough, but mash tun?  Could use the still for mashing perhaps. 
 

Any thoughts?

I get it, we used to run small pilot batches on our little 15g test still all the time.  We quickly graduated past that.

Consider running full size pilot batches.  That's what we do now.  Our experimental batches are sold as limited edition releases at the distillery and tend to move very, very quickly.  We generally sell out in a week or two.  Our customers love them, limited edition release days attract a pretty significant crowd for us.  We almost always sell them in 375ml sizes - which is perfect for someone wanting to be a little bit adventurous.

This also lets us gather a good cross section of customer feedback.

To accelerate the process, consider aging in barrels 1/2 or 1/3 the size of what your production barrel size will be.  So, if our target is 30 gallons for aging, we'll lay down 3 10g or 2 15g.  If our target is 55g, we'll lay down 3 15g (1 year) or 2 30g (2 year)

There are some assumptions inherent in this - that you have a pretty good idea of the target mash bill - and are likely only tweaking past the initial batch, etc.  You are also investing at least a year or two in the R&D process - but really, you are going to need to do this anyway - why not make it profitable?  The sales of the limited edition product generally helps fund the new product development cost.  So from a scale and experimentation standpoint, this takes what would be sunk R&D cost and makes it into a profitable endeavor.

[Silk City Distillers]

Here is one of this month's experimental releases.  Even with COVID, we're almost sold out at the 2 week mark.

60% Wheat(30% Weyermann "Chocolate" Roast Wheat Malt and 30% White Wheat), 40% Corn - 18 months in a 15g.  It's amazing how much bittersweet chocolate comes through from the Weyermann malt - it's like dark chocolate brownies.

Our customer base is amazing in that they allow us to produce crazy whiskies like this.  If we had to make the same thing every day, it'd be really boring.

(We also released a beechwood smoked straight malt whiskey this month too).

[Hudson bay distillers]

 We find that people love to be a part of the RD proçess especially if you ask them to participate in filling out tasting notes . We have sheets with tasting notes listed and color and nose listed and ask people to give each note a number out of ten..it makes for very interesting feed back . We tell people to take it home and fill it out in the comfort of there home and bring it back. Its big fun to put random notes in the list like ....earthy moccasin just to see if people are paying attention lol. 

Tim 

[Southernhighlander]

Aside from recipe development, pilot stills can also be a great starting point to get your DSP and get up and distilling.  We've had several customers order big stills that took 20 weeks to build and we delivered their pilot stills within 2 or 3 weeks and by the time they received their big stills, they had several recipes worked out.  Seeing incredibly expensive Vendome and German made Pilot/R&D stills at trade shows, gave me the idea to start building jacketed ones.  Also we have had a few customers start out with 20 gallon 45 gallon or 50 gallon stills for their distilleries (don't quit your day job).  We sold Ozark Distillery their first 40 gallon jacketed still several years ago. Dave ran that still for around a year then a purchased a 150 gallon still if, I remember right, then he traded the 150 gallon in on a 500 gallon still and he has been going strong ever since.  Last I heard he was making hand sanitizer for his local hospital etc.  He is not our only customer who started small and grew.  We sell around 40 jacketed 10, 20, 45 and 50 gallon stills per year to distilleries, 

[JakeH]

2 hours ago, Hudson bay distillers said:

 We find that people love to be a part of the RD proçess especially if you ask them to participate in filling out tasting notes . We have sheets with tasting notes listed and color and nose listed and ask people to give each note a number out of ten..it makes for very interesting feed back . We tell people to take it home and fill it out in the comfort of there home and bring it back. Its big fun to put random notes in the list like ....earthy moccasin just to see if people are paying attention lol. 

Tim 

that is a new one I haven't heard or seen.  That is definitely one I will remember.  

 

[DrDistillation]

What I like about smaller stills is the ability to change out the configuration quite easily by one person.  It's easy to add/remove plates, put a reflux column on them or configure them to run as a pot still.  It's a single person job.  Same with cleaning, super easy.  A 26 gallon for example direct fired electric is light enough a single person can move it for cleaning if needed.  You can use copper or SS heads without breaking the bank.  You can line the inside of the boiler with copper sheeting if you want copper in the boiler.  Flexible if done right.

I happen to like that size for R&D as a single 55 gallon fermenter is usually all that's needed.  You can ferment 40 to 45 gallons, do two strip runs for example followed by a spirit run for something whiskey/rum like or a couple of single reflux runs.  You don't need to tie up your normal fermenters if you have enough room for a 55 gallon plastic drum or similar which can be moved out of the area easily when not needed.

The other thing I think a lot of people ignore is the usefulness for daily use.  Even that size can be quite useful to a small distillery.  Load it up with 3x botanicals at 30 to 45% ABV "macerated vodka" and run it in pot still mode making a concentrated gin which you can mix back with 2 parts vodka.  The little 26 gallon still can be ran while you're running your bigger stills easily and can be ran like clock work used like this and they can crank out a couple hundred bottles of gin a day which may be more than needed doing it this way. Use them for curacao, aqua vitae, gin or anything else you might want to produce in small amounts for previously distilled neutral macerations while running your bigger stills for your main products or making neutral.

So besides R&D, they can be used for production as well when you think about how to use them wisely. Best of all they don't break the bank and can pay for themselves extremely fast.

[MG Thermal Consulting]

If you need a small chiller for the still, I have both 115/1/60 and 230/1/60.